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What's The Big Idea?

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Mother Goose Programs

What's the BIG Idea?™ is a program created by Mother Goose Programs™ with funding provided by the National Science Foundation. This program provides professional development and materials to help librarians incorporate math and science into their programming and resources for young children ages 4-7 and their families. Sixty librarians from Houston, the state of Delaware, the Clinton-Essex-Franklin Library System in upstate New York and two Vermont towns have to date engaged in two conferences focusing on "big" ideas critical to children's acquisition of basic math and science skills and concepts: Patterns and Relationships, Numbers and Operations, Change Over Time and Geometry and Spatial Sense.

The project librarians have converted what they learned into hundreds of programs in local libraries using project-created informational resources, books, and manipulative.

The What's the BIG Idea? Math and Science Librarian Kit is now available. In addition, a sample of this first section is available for free download.

Why "What's the BIG Idea?" And why now?

The National Science Foundation (NSF) wishes to expand education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into community organizations. They call it "informal science" or science outside the classroom. In our grant proposal to NSF, we proposed to help that most accessible of community resources––the public library––become a place where science and mathematics programming, especially for young children and their families, becomes part of library practice. This includes not only programs like story hours, but also reference and loan materials, displays, and other communications with and programming for library patrons. Though the program was developed with public librarians in mind, school librarians have also successfully incorporated the activities and materials into their curricula.

The Mother Goose Programs team in Vermont administers the program, with assistance from a National Advisory Panel.

Based on the work we do over the next four years––conferences, in–library experiences, community partnerships and thinking and re–thinking book selections and investigations––we will create a professional development model for libraries large and small, urban and rural throughout the country.

To accomplish this, we will investigate these questions:

• How can the public library become a science and mathematics learning center for young children and their families?
• What information and training do librarians need in order to make science and mathematics learning come alive for young children?
• What information, knowledge and materials do librarians need in order to infuse science and mathematics content into their practice, programming, collections and displays?
• Who are the community resource partners who will augment this effort?
• How can the answers to these questions be disseminated nationally?

Participants say:

"What's the BIG Idea? has opened up my mind to many rich experiences for the children at my library programs. Parents are motivated the program because they discover that learning is exciting and that they are capable of leading their children in exploring, experimenting, and observing their surroundings and learning through carefully crafted activities, frequent reading, and thoughtful conversation."
– Public Librarian in Houston, TX

"I never knew learning could be so much fun! Building, sorting, collecting data–the children in my programs are clamoring for more!" – New York public librarian